erdo

That's sarcasm, it probably also wasn't actually Funny. Nothing about what they said suggests they didn't subsequently look into why their tests missed the issue

That's exactly how I treat publishing my own OSS now (probably on a smaller scale though).

I had started by hoping (almost assuming) people would be amazed at how useful my library was. But mostly they didn't notice it, or (and this was harder to accept): didn't even recognize or understand the issues it was addressing in the first place.

5 years later, the issues are generally much better understood in android world, but still. I know some teams are using it, but it's probably not that many.

So publishing it has just become a hobby, it's something I can be proud of, it works nicely, I often use it (or the knowledge gained while writing it) to speed up whatever I'm doing and make my life easier. I also publish articles about said issues, and they seem to be helpful to the people that read them, and I enjoy explaining things I understand.

I'm not on the engineering manager track, and I hope to be programming until I retire, so I'll probably just keep supporting it.

If I had any advice for the OP I'd say set your expectations at: personal pride in doing a good job

(I'm definitely not the best person to dispense any kind of marketing advice anyway)

Gitx is great for that on a mac, but every time I set up a new MacBook I have to hunt down the latest repo / build. It keeps getting abandoned and then forked and continued, and then abandoned again...

Edit: looks like it's back from the dead again :) https://github.com/gitx/gitx

I do TDD in one specific case, and it's always a unit test. Very occasionally I will need to write a function or a small class do some complicated logic that I'm too lazy or stupid to work out how to do. I do know exactly what the results should look like though, including all the possible edge cases.

( I think the last time I did this was for a point of sale terminal I was working on, which needed a solution similar to the change making problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change-making_problem )

Anyway, for those situations, I write a large number of tests cases, covering every reasonable scenario, plus a bunch of unreasonable scenarios.

Then I write a half-assed implementation that fails on several tests, and I keep hacking about until more of the tests pass. Once they all pass, I stop. Even if at that point I have no idea why that particular version of the code completely works.

It's nasty I know, but sometimes it's the quickest way to a robust implementation

Ha of course it does, thanks :) I don't know why I didn't see that

so we could expect about 5 people with dementia in that control group, and the test group got 0, so not bad

These stats are only useful if we know how many people get dementia in the first place.

What are the chances of a random control group of 14 over 85 year olds also not getting dementia?

If it's very common, and you would usually expect 7 of them to develop dementia, then 0 cases in the test group is potentially impressive. If it's quite rare and you would usually expect only one of the control group to get dementia, then it's not that impressive that the test group had 0, and easily down to chance

Who is this news org, why should we trust them? A cursory look at their content suggests we shouldn't.

It's easy, all you need to do is spot the term "Russiagate", in this case the "gate" is being used to suggest that Russian influence in American politics is a fake news story (which it definitely isn't, see Muller report)

the source blog post: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/rml-polit...

"In six out of seven countries — all but Germany — Tweets posted by accounts from the political right receive more algorithmic amplification than the political left when studied as a group."

That reminds me of when I was at university in the 90s, a favourite trick was to set MSWord's auto correct on the communal computers to change the word "the" to "wanker". People would arrive with their floppy disks, print out their assignments ready to hand in and then notice (or fail to notice) a page full of wankers. Hilarity ensued (...mostly)

Yes a lot of people like to be the person who says what the "best practices" are (even or maybe especially if they've just made them up) it sounds much more impressive than "I like to do it this way"

> my project manager asks me why we're not using sequential IDs, and I say it's a best practice according to the documentation, he'll happily accept that answer even if neither of us understand why it's a best practice.

I have to say, I think I would be happier with an answer like "because it avoids hotspotting according to the bocs"

This limits the applicability of the "don't use sequential IDs" rule to where it actually helps.

Otherwise, the rumour spreads, and later you find teams doing huge damaging work arounds to avoid using sequential IDs, in contexts where hotspotting is totally irrelevant (perhaps because they are not even using Firestore) all blissfully unaware, because they they think they are following "best practice"

I've seen this happen so often in large companies, the words "best practice" let people abdicate their professional responsibility to _think_ and it's quite dangerous IMO

I agree completely with this article (but it probably depends on which area of development you work in).

I'm an android developer and whenever I hear the term best practice it immediately sets off my BS detector.

I agree, it was certainly very surprising to me when I find out

It's not really a matter of paper work, you simply don't have the right to move to another country just because you feel like it. Whereas it's a key pillar of EU membership.

As a non EU citizen, immigrating depends on that specific country's requirements, but typically it would be a time limited arrangement, you'd need to pass a language test, find a company willing to sponsor the effort (so your residency is tied to that specific that job, and if you loose it you need to leave), that job would need to be at a certain level (e.g managerial level), the job would need to be in a field where there are national shortages, the sponsoring company would need to prove that it had made the effort to fill the job with a local first. If you're rich enough you can alternatively pay to create a business with maybe 100k capital and employ 1 or 2 nationals on a continuing basis and get your residency that way. Software developers no doubt have an easier time than most given the lack of software devs, but it's not a given by any means.

I think this is referred to as the Surinder Singh principle, here's more about it:

https://www.freemovement.org.uk/surinder-singh-immigration-r...

Well, this is true. Some of those things are also true of London though.

Re the admin (to get set up on the health care system etc) everything does need things like original birth certificates etc. And I spent several days going in person(!) to an office somewhere to deal with it (but that's mainly because my french is not really good enough to deal with things like that on the phone easily)

I think if I was on my own here, loneliness would have been a real issue until I had decent conversational french. (I moved with my family though, so it's less if an issue for me)

Ahh I see what you mean, it would typically involve staying in a London hotel a few nights a week. Maybe traveling in on Monday mornings, and leaving on Friday afternoon.

I do have a British passport still, and I have a french residence permit, so in both directions it's fairly simple anyway (and the Eurostar is almost like taking a regular national train but it's a good 2-3 hours). Taking a flight is a bit more hassle and terrible for the environment (but cheaper).

About 20 years ago in London I worked with a guy who commuted from Greece(!) to London once a week. London salary, worked from home on Mondays, came in on Tuesday morning, budget London hotel on Wednesday and Thursday night, and back to a big house in Greece for the weekend.

I think that's just the good old ambiguity of the English language, I read it as: western civilization being oddly similar to Japanese civilisation (I'm a British native, but I don't claim to be any kind of arbiter of the English language!)

Moved from the UK to France after the Brexit vote (the last chance to easily move my family to another country and have my kids grow up as Europeans with the ability to work and live in the EU country of their choice, access low cost or free university education etc.)

I'm a contractor and felt reasonably sure I could find work as an android developer in most large cities - Paris is also close enough that if things really went sideways I could commute to London for work. That turned out to be true, although the rate for developers is a little lower in Paris (and now I work remotely from Paris for a UK company anyway).

Finding an apartment was one of the hardest things, in the end I had to pay someone to find us one. Dealing with all the admin was pretty tough, but visa wise it was straight forward (because it was still within the EU). I hired an accountant to set me up a small business and do the tax work (exactly the same as I had done in London). I also pay another accountant to handle the personal tax (it got complicated for a while because some of my income was UK based and the UK and French financial year is different)

I think I underestimated how much french language skills would help, but also underestimated how much my french would come back to me (I studied french at school as a kid) so it worked out.

It was tough at times but I don't regret it one bit, life is better here in so many ways.

Sitting by the Seine on a summer's evening with friends and a bottle of wine is amazing. Try to do the same in London, you'll be moved on a by a security guard because the Thames river side is all privately owned despite its appearances. That sums up the difference for me, France truly is a republic, and it feels like it.

Might sound like a strange comment, but I really like the tone of the readme. It's very welcoming and clear, you don't often find that level of professionalism in readme docs - it makes me think the author is probably quite unusual (in a good way)

close the windows

I'm very happy about it (as someone who lives here), the cars need to go.

I just read that using "id" is the preferred way (see the other reply) "name" is deprecated for this use, but it still works of course (I'm not a web developer, been using the same markdown trick for years)

Not sure if this helps you, and you may already be aware of it, but in my gitHub pages markdown I have titles like these:

## <a name="boiler-plate"></a>Removing more boiler plate

I agree, at least in my experience of android development, "Best Practice" often means: what I read on Medium, or what Google said.

It's for people who aren't confident enough to admit to simply having a preference, or knowledgeable enough to be able to explain it

Except we don't have anything like 50 years!

When do you consider the left to have moved on climate? Climate change was a fairly bi-partisan issue initially. George Bush is famous for pushing cap and trade ideas in the late 80s early 90s for instance

ClimateTown has a fairly entertaining video about it https://youtu.be/MondapIjAAM

I think asking why is a great way to quickly find out if the person I'm talking to doesn't know what they're talking about (I'm thinking specifically of developer discussions here). You don't have to be rude about it, there are plenty of ways to gently probe (feigning ignorance for example) but if it only takes a single "why" to get to some software "rule" or an immediate reference to a higher authority and nothing else, then you can move on with your day.

If the conversation leads to specific examples, lessons learned or a deeper explanation then it can be a great learning experience.

This sounds like good advice, and that level of communication can certainly be missing sometimes.

Quite a few software projects though are one off custom jobs where the requirements have never been implemented before (sometimes anywhere) and it does make estimating based on past performance pretty difficult. It's also notoriously hard to predict all the problems you might come across ahead of time, especially if you aren't familiar with the specifics of the code you will need to integrate with (maybe you could consider that like quoting to refurbish an old house before you've looked inside it and seen the damp patch and the hole in the roof)

It does get easier with experience though, and much more so if you are regularly doing the same kind of software projects.

Some sales people work out how much the client is willing to pay, and that's the price. The deliverables are squeezed in to that price at a later date, by cutting corners if necessary - I think it's quite an effective way for companies to make money.